A Day with Dr. Russel L. Ackoff
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web link broken :-(
Video of presentation to the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
"Among the topics Dr. Ackoff discussed during the workshop were:
- The history and application of systems thinking
- How do social systems allow us to understand and overcome long term problems in today's environment?
- How can you effect change within the system in which you play a role?"

A Brief Guide to Interactive Planning and Idealized Design
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"Interactive planning is directed at creating the future. It is based on the belief that an organization's future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it. Therefore, this type of planning consists of the design of a desirable present and the selection or invention of ways of approximating it as closely as possible. It creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be."

The Future of Operational Research is Past
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"I hold academic OR and the relevant professional societies primarily responsible for this decline-and since I had a hand in initiating both, I share this responsibility. By the mid 1960's most OR courses in American universities were given by academics w

Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research
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"In a previous paper I tried to show that OR is in a mess. There is no one solution to a mess. What is needed are designs and inventions that will enable Operational Researchers to formulate their ideals explicitly, pursue them effectively and do so in a

A Systemic View of Transformational Leadership
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"Therefore, a transformational leader is one who can produce, or encourage and facilitate the production of, a mobilizing vision of a transformed system. Equally important, the leader must be able to inspire and organize or have organized an effective pursuit of that vision and maintain it even when sacrifices are required."

Transforming The Systems Movement
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"Systems thinking produces radical and potentially revolutionary visions of public institutions. Nothing short of such visions can transform the state of world affairs. I believe we have an obligation to the global society of which we are a part to make

Interview of Russell Ackoff
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Printed interview (the site also offers a audio version of the interview). "So analysis,we discovered, yields information about the structure of
something, and how it works, that?s knowledge, know how. Explanations lie outside, that?s synthetic thinking

A Major Mistake That Managers Make
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"Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did."

Thinking About the Future
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"My preoccupation is with where we would ideally like to be right now. Knowing this, we can act now so as constantly to reduce the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Then, to a large extent, the future is created by what we do now."

An Alternative School Voucher System
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"This system would move much of the control of public and private education into the hands of the parents of students. They cannot possibly do worse than the so-called experts have done, and there is a good chance that they will do much better."

On Learning and Systems That Facilitate It
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"Put another way, it is usually better to do the right thing wrong than it is to do the wrong thing right. When one does the wrong thing right, one's error is reinforced, and this encourages further improvement in the pursuit of the wrong end."

A Little Book of F-laws: 13 common sins of management
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Laws include: The more time managers spend trying to get rid of what they don.t want, the less likely they are to get what they do want; Managers who don.t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure. Great, highly recommended.

Towards A System of Systems Concepts
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"System and the most important types of system are defined so that differences and similarities are made explicit. Particular attention is given to that type of system of most interest to management scientists: organizations. The relationship between a sy

Why Few Organizations Adopt Systems Thinking
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"To understand why organizations do not use mistakes as opportunities for learning, other than a disposition inherited from educational institutions, we must recognize that there are two types of mistake: errors of commission and errors of omission."

Interview of and by Dr. Ackoff and Dr. Deming
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Great stuff. The transcript spells Dr. Ackoff's name wrong (Akoff). They discuss the important of viewing organizations as systems and a fair amount of time on the problems with business school education in the USA. And they touch on a huge number of management topics. Dr. Deming "When one understands who depends on me, then I may take joy in my work." Dr. Ackoff "If there isn't join in work, you won't get productivity, and you won't get quality."